Prologue
1. A group of Reagan’s friends bought the house for $2.5 million while he was still in office and leased it to him with an option to buy—which Reagan did, in December 1989, for $3.0 million. The 7,192-square-foot home sits on a 1.29-acre lot and features a swimming pool, three bedrooms, and six bathrooms. Next door is the former Kirkeby Estate, which served as the setting for the Beverly Hillbillies television show. Despite the price of Reagan’s home, one real estate agent noted that “it’s a very ordinary house—Reagan must be the poorest man in Bel-Air.”
Chapter One
1. There were supposed to be three debates in the 1980 campaign, due to the presence of third-party candidate John Anderson, a Republican congressman from Illinois who ran as an independent. President Carter refused to debate Anderson, giving Reagan and Carter the chance to go head-to-head.
2. Reagan’s hair was actually brown, but the wet look of his hairstyling made it appear black.
3. One reason Jimmy Carter is behind is that CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite’s nightly tally of the number of days the American hostages had been held in Iran helped lower voter confidence in Carter.
4. He immediately attempted to cover the slip by adding, “That’s where I’m going,” referring to his four-nation swing through South America. In fact, he was not going to Bolivia. His next stop was Colombia, whose capital city is Bogotá. Officials tried to cover for Reagan by changing the transcript of the speech to read “Bogota.” When asked why, they replied that it was what Reagan intended to say and refused to alter their correction.
5. While this remark is still unclaimed, those within the Reagan and Carter circles believe they were the words of the late Lyn Nofziger (1924–2006), a political veteran who was known for his candor with the press.
6. Barbara Walters, ABC News; William Hilliard, Portland Oregonian; Marvin L. Stone, U.S. News & World Report; and Harry Ellis, Christian Science Monitor.
7. Three thousand in the auditorium and 80.6 million watching at home on television.
8. The Reagan campaign argued that the lecterns should be side by side, which would accentuate Reagan’s height. The Carter campaign refused. On the night of the debate, as one observer noted, the lecterns were “as far as possible apart, without actually going off the stage.”
9. Nancy Reagan was born in New York City on July 6, 1921, as Anne Frances Robbins. Her mother was an actress and her father a used-car salesman. The two split up when the girl who had earned the nickname Nancy was just six. She was sent to live with family in Maryland. Her mother remarried, to a Chicago neurosurgeon named Loyal Davis, who adopted Nancy and gave her his surname. In 1949, after working for a time as a sales clerk, she traveled to Hollywood to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. During that time she dated several prominent names in Hollywood, among them Clark Gable.
10. As noted in Craig Shirley’s Rendezvous with Destiny, the late Paul Corbin, an influential Democrat and friend of the Kennedy family who was bitter about Ted Kennedy losing to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primary race, admitted to stealing the playbook shortly after copies were assembled in the White House on the night of October 23. The book was then given to William Casey, the former World War II OSS spy who led the Reagan campaign. Finally, on October 25, the Carter book was handed to the three key players in Reagan’s debate prep: James Baker III, David Gergen, and David Stockman. Three years later, when word about the theft was leaked, a ten-month congressional and FBI investigation ensued. Corbin never surfaced as the culprit, and the truth did not come out about his involvement until after his death in 1990. Pat Caddell, when interviewed for this book, said he believes Corbin was given the book by a member of the National Security Council serving in Carter’s White House.
11. Just moments after the debate ended, a group of journalists came to Jimmy Carter before he could leave the stage. “Are you prepared to claim victory? Did you win it?” Carter refused to answer.
12. Carter won his home state of Georgia, plus Minnesota, the home state of running mate Walter Mondale. The Carter-Mondale ticket also captured Hawaii, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
Chapter Two
1. Not an actual street, but a movie set at Universal Studios. Similar homes on the back lot would be used for many productions in the years to come, including the hit television series Desperate Housewives.
2. Fred de Cordova, a graduate of Harvard Law School, will go on to become Johnny Carson’s longtime producer on The Tonight Show. In that time, Carson will make several comedic jabs at Bedtime for Bonzo.
3. The Wrigley family, who owned the Cubs at the time, also owned a controlling interest in the island, which is why the Cubs trained there.
4. They were members of a band called the Oklahoma Outlaws, which had a big following in the Midwest. Autry, who was looking for ways to broaden his national audience, had arranged to bring them to Hollywood.
5. Such a pace will be unheard of in years to come, but in an era before television, studios produce hundreds of films each year, and for an actor to go from one picture to another is as simple as walking from one soundstage to a different one next door.
6. Code-named Operation Aphrodite, the drone program featured radio-controlled B-24 bombers that were packed with explosives and flown into position by pilots, who would then bail out as the planes flew on to their targets, guided from afar by a “mother ship.” Sometimes, however, the explosives detonated long before the pilots were able to eject. One such fatality was Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., older brother of future U.S. president John F. Kennedy, who died in a similar naval program known as Operation Anvil.
7. Michael Reagan later wrote of Wyman that the death of Christine was “probably the most painful experience of her life, and I don’t think she ever truly recovered from it.” Wyman’s 1951 movie The Blue Veil reopened those wounds, as the protagonist dealt with the matter of premature infant death. Filmed in and around St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, the film had a profound impact on Jane Wyman’s life. The experience brought about a spiritual transformation; three years later, Wyman was baptized into the Catholic Church.
8. Of the fifty-three films he made in his career, Kings Row was Reagan’s favorite. He plays the second lead in the picture, a young man whose legs have been amputated by a villainous surgeon. Reagan’s key line, which he uttered spontaneously, happens the moment the young man looks down and sees that his legs are gone: “Where’s the rest of me?” It later became the title of his 1965 memoir.
9. Laurie would go on to win Academy Award nominations for The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God. Patricia Neal would win an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1963 for Hud, costarring Paul Newman. Penny Edwards was never nominated but made a name for herself as Roy Rogers’s love interest in six Hollywood Westerns.
10. Chief among Larson’s reasons for turning him down is her adherence to the Bahá’í Faith, which does not believe in politics. However, that excuse belies the fact that Larson was not in love with Reagan. Among others, she is seeing actors Gary Cooper and Mickey Rooney. She will also go on to have an affair with Lew Ayres, the actor who was involved with Jane Wyman while she and Reagan were still married. In another example of the mattress hopping so common in Hollywood at the time, the legendary lover and Reagan’s friend, Gary Cooper, will be rumored to have slept with almost every single leading lady of his lengthy career, including Patricia Neal.
11. Wyman won Best Actress for Johnny Belinda in 1949. She was also nominated for Best Actress in 1947 (The Yearling), 1952 (The Blue Veil), and 1955 (Magnificent Obsession).
Chapter Three
1. The sequel is titled Bonzo Goes to College. It stars Edmund Gwenn, best known for his role as Kris Kringle in the classic Miracle on 34th Street, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
2. Kelly was a man of high ideals who left the Catholic Church when he felt it was not doing enough to halt world hunger, yet donated money to the Provisional Irish Republican Army in its war against Protestants and the British occupation of Northern Ireland. The famous dancer, best known for Singin’ in the Rain, was once quoted as saying, “I believe in God, the American Way of Life, the freedom of the individual, and everything the Constitution of the United States stands for.” To Kelly, this also meant tolerance for the Communists, which made him the perfect middleman for discussions between Reagan and Sorrell.
3. Revere won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in the movie National Velvet. Morley turned to politics after leaving Hollywood, running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of New York in 1954. She returned to acting in the 1970s, appearing on television in episodes of Kojak and Kung Fu.
4. Not to be confused with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Communist investigations, HUAC was originally founded in 1938 to root out Nazi sympathizers. It switched its focus to communism as the Soviet Union rose to power. Thirty-four-year-old Richard Nixon, a newly elected California congressman, was a member of HUAC on the day Reagan testified but was not in attendance.
5. The battle against communism dogged Ronald Reagan right up to the very end of his term as Screen Actors Guild president. On January 16, 1952, during one of Reagan’s final SAG meetings, powerful director Stanley Kramer explained to the board that his recent movie, Death of a Salesman, was being picketed by pro-Communist groups who were accusing him of discrimination because he refused to employ Communists. In order to prevent the increasing use of this tactic against other filmmakers, Kramer filed a libel lawsuit. Director John Ford, who gained fame making John Wayne Westerns such as Stagecoach, stepped forward to say that he would testify on Kramer’s behalf. As a result, Reagan and the SAG board issued a formal resolution backing Kramer and repudiating the Communist pressure. Left unsaid was that during his tenure as president of the SAG board, Reagan had completely shifted the leadership from being sympathetic to communism to openly opposing the ideology and its tactics.
Chapter Four
1. Nancy Davis has never been married. She was engaged briefly in 1944 to a young naval officer named J. P. White Jr. but broke it off after just a few months. A series of brief affairs followed. “She was what men at that time thought of as ‘available,’” a family friend will later recall. After moving from Chicago to New York in 1945 to pursue a Broadway career, Davis had affairs with actor Alfred Drake and producer Max Allentuck. She moved to California and signed with MGM in 1949, where she earned a reputation for being ambitious and allegedly having a torrid affair with producer Benny Thau, a man well known for using the casting couch to further the careers of young actresses. In 1949 Nancy made a list for herself of show business’s most eligible bachelors, with an eye to trying to marry one. Ronald Reagan’s name was at the top of the list, beginning the three years of pursuit leading to their marriage.
2. Ardis Ankerson is a striking brunette who goes by the stage name of Brenda Marshall. Unlike many actresses, she insists that friends and family use her real name rather than her stage name. She is best known for playing Errol Flynn’s love interest in the 1940 pirate film The Sea Hawk. She made her last film in 1950, preferring to put her career on hold to raise a family. After a number of separations, William Holden and Ardis Ankerson divorced in 1971. Among Holden’s lovers during their marriage were costars Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Shelley Winters, and the French bombshell Capucine. He also had a torrid weeklong affair with Jackie Kennedy in the mid-1950s. Holden, who bragged to a friend that he had played the role of bedroom tutor to the wife of the future American president, commented, “If she goes back to Washington and works her magic with Kennedy he will owe me one.”
3. Neighbors of the Holdens include Bob Hope, Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges, and Frank Sinatra. The Holden home will one day be owned by actor Denzel Washington.
4. President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were married at the Mission Inn. A host of other presidents has visited the historic building: Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and George W. Bush. Notably, Kennedy is the only Democrat.
5. Reagan is not at the hospital the night Patricia Ann Reagan is delivered by caesarean section. He is in the arms of Larson. However, that relationship comes to an end shortly thereafter, when Reagan shows up at Larson’s apartment and a French actor wearing just a small towel answers the door. Nancy will never acknowledge that she is aware of the relationship but will later comment, “When I was back in my room and the nurses brought me our baby for the first time, my first thought was that it was sad that Ronnie couldn’t be there.” Reagan never provided an excuse for his absence; Nancy just accepted that he wasn’t there.
Chapter Seven
1. Among them are Judith Campbell and the actress Marilyn Monroe. Campbell, who once dated Frank Sinatra, will go on to become the mistress of mobster Sam Giancana.
2. The official residence of the vice president is now the U.S. Naval Observatory in northwestern Washington, DC. However, Congress did not make this official until 1974. Until that time, vice presidents maintained their own private residence. Nixon purchased the five-thousand-square-foot house on Forest Lane in 1957.
3. The writer was Norman Mailer, in a piece for Esquire about the 1960 Democratic National Convention titled “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.”
4. November 19, 1955. The National Review was founded by William F. Buckley Jr., a wealthy former CIA operative who believed that conservative commentary was all too often missing from American political debate.
5. Reagan’s animosity toward John F. Kennedy will continue even after the young president is shot dead by an assassin’s bullet. On November 22, 1963, just a few hours after JFK is assassinated, Ronald and Nancy Reagan will hold a dinner. “Why should we cancel our dinner party just because John F. Kennedy died? Don’t be silly,” Nancy Reagan told one guest who called to ask if the party was still on. The man, a film producer and former U.S. Army brigadier general named Frank McCarthy, arrived to find Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and actor Robert Taylor socializing. As a film producer, McCarthy will go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1970 for Patton.
6. Polls showed that Richard Nixon would win the 1962 California gubernatorial election. However, Nixon failed to reach out to the more conservative elements of the Republican Party, a blunder that cost him dearly. The incumbent, Pat Brown, won in a landslide, garnering 52 percent of the popular vote to Nixon’s 47 percent.
7. One young supporter of Goldwater, and an active member of the Young Republican movement, was a seventeen-year-old Chicago-area young lady named Hillary Rodham. She was fond of wearing a cowgirl outfit and a straw hat emblazoned with the Goldwater campaign’s AuH2O slogan (Au is the periodic symbol for gold; H2O the symbol for water). Shortly afterward, she would switch her party allegiance to the Democrats, perhaps under pressure from her liberal friends at Wellesley College.
8. Reagan’s previous film was 1957’s Hellcats of the Navy, which costarred Nancy Reagan. Their final on-camera performance as a couple was the 1958 GE Theater episode with the prescient title “A Turkey for the President.”
9. Delivered at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. Bryan was a thirty-six-year-old former Nebraska congressman when he delivered the address. His oration was so powerful that the audience screamed in agreement, waving hats and canes. Some audience members threw their coats into the air. The speech, which advocated the use of silver coinage to increase American prosperity, was so effective that Bryan won the nomination. He ultimately lost the general election to Republican candidate William McKinley (who was shot by an assassin’s bullet on September 6, 1901, died eight days later, and was succeeded in office by Theodore Roosevelt). William Jennings Bryan ran for the presidency twice more and later in life supplemented his income by delivering the “Cross of Gold” speech during lecture appearances. Bryan is also well known as being the foil for famed attorney Clarence Darrow during the Scopes Monkey Trial, which argued the legality of teaching evolution in schools. Bryan, a devout Presbyterian, argued against the practice. He died in his sleep five days after winning the case.
Chapter Eight
1. Death Valley Days, a Western-themed production that ran for 452 episodes from 1952 to 1970. Reagan was the second of four men who hosted the show. He also acted in eight episodes.
2. When confronted many years later, Ronald Reagan will deny that astrologers played a role in his gubernatorial swearing-in, stating that the unusual midnight ceremony was due to the fact that then governor Pat Brown was making last-minute bureaucratic appointments.
3. Reagan’s sadness about the sale of the ranch to Twentieth Century–Fox in 1966 was tempered by the $1.9 million selling price, which made him a millionaire for the first time. The property is now part of Malibu Creek State Park, but during the time that Twentieth Century–Fox owned it, the ranch was the location for many motion pictures, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was also the location for the television show M*A*S*H.
4. Reagan might also have been fired from GE Theater because he was speaking out against the Tennessee Valley Authority, in which General Electric had a financial interest. And there was also a drop in the ratings, due to Bonanza being moved to a Sunday night slot opposite GE Theater. The popular Western won the top spot easily.
5. The lone American student on the panel is a former Princeton basketball player and Olympic gold medalist currently attending Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. Bill Bradley is twenty-three years old and will one day go on to play ten seasons in the National Basketball Association and serve three terms in the U.S. Senate. He was called upon to speak just once during the Kennedy-Reagan debate, and his comments were notable for his civil tone and a failed attempt to defuse the arrogant hostility of many of his fellow panelists.
6. The 1968 election was one of the closest in American history. Nixon beat Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey by winning thirty-two states and 301 electoral votes. The results were so close that Nixon was not assured of victory for more than fifteen hours after the polls closed on Election Day.
Chapter Nine
1. “Pat” Nixon was born Thelma Catherine Ryan in 1912. She earned the nickname Pat as a child because of her family’s Irish heritage and because she was born the day before St. Patrick’s Day. She is older than her husband by ten months.
2. Nixon slept in the very bed used by Truman and Eisenhower. It was not until Gerald Ford’s residence that a president and First Lady slept in the same bedroom. Pat Nixon’s room was officially known as the master bedroom of the White House and was where Abraham Lincoln slept. The room we know as the Lincoln Bedroom was actually an office used by Lincoln and is often said to be the scene of ghost sightings. The White House was completely gutted during the 1948–52 renovation.
3. An anti-Reagan group led by organized labor and the California teachers’ unions failed to collect the signatures necessary to recall Governor Reagan. The only successful recall attempt in that state occurred in 2003, when Governor Gray Davis was removed from office and replaced by Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
4. Sinatra was furious when President John Kennedy refused to stay at his Palm Springs home because of the singer’s alleged Mafia connections. Sinatra switched his allegiance to the Republican Party as a result.
5. Nixon accepted the resignations of advisers H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, as well as that of Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. He fired White House counsel John Dean for his role in a Watergate cover-up, despite the fact that Dean had been ordered by the White House to lie. This makes an enemy out of Dean, who will subsequently provide very damning testimony against Nixon.
6. Spiro Agnew served as vice president from 1969 to 1973. He was very controversial, particularly because he attacked the press, once famously calling journalists “nattering nabobs of negativism.” He was accused of taking bribes and kickbacks from contractors during his time as governor of Maryland, a practice that continued into his vice presidency. He was ultimately accused of tax evasion, conspiracy, bribery, and tax fraud. However, he plea-bargained those charges down to just one: income tax evasion, to which he pleaded no contest. The terms of this deal included three years’ probation and resignation from the office of vice president of the United States. Agnew never spoke to Richard Nixon again once he left office, but he was in attendance at Nixon’s funeral in 1994. Spiro Agnew died of leukemia in 1996 at seventy-seven.
7. Voice-activated tape recorders were located in the Oval Office, the Executive Office Building office, the Cabinet Room, and in the Aspen Lodge at Camp David. In addition, microphones were placed inside telephones in those locations and in the Lincoln Sitting Room. Nixon was taping the conversations for posterity, knowing that one day historians would be interested in the 3,700 hours of conversations that he taped between the installation of the tape recording system in early 1971 and July 12, 1973, when he stopped recording due to the Watergate scandal. Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson had also made it a habit to tape White House conversations.
8. Edward Cox, who is married to Nixon’s daughter Tricia, had been a staunch defender of Nixon throughout Watergate. But by August 6, 1974, he realized that Nixon was no longer capable of governing. When Michigan senator Robert Griffin told Cox that Nixon seemed completely rational, Cox informed him, “The President was up walking the halls last night, talking to pictures of former presidents—giving speeches and talking to the pictures on the wall.”
9. The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 (amended in 1886, 1947, and 1967) stipulated which individual would be next in line for the presidency. It was always understood that a president would leave office before the completion of his term only through death, not resignation. However, in the unlikely event resignation should take place, Section 11 of the act requires the president to submit an instrument of resignation in writing to the secretary of state.
10. Nixon’s helicopter takes him to Andrews Air Force Base, where he boards Air Force One with his family. The plane flies to El Toro Marine Corps Station in Orange County, California, where Nixon then travels by car to his home on the ocean in San Clemente. Air Force One is thirteen miles southwest of Jefferson City, Missouri, when Gerald Ford takes the oath of office as president of the United States. As Air Force One carries that designation only when the president is on board, pilot Ralph Albertazzie radios ground control to ask for a new call sign. Thus, Richard Nixon’s presidency finally and officially comes to an end.
Chapter Eleven
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics adjust this figure to roughly $872,000 in today’s currency.
2. The Department of Defense once considered January 1, 1961, as the first official day of the Vietnam War. However, American military advisers were in the country long before that. This meant that the name of U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Richard Fitzgibbon Jr., who died in 1956, before the war officially began, could not be listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The policy was changed in 1998, shifting the start of the war to November 1, 1955. Fitzgibbon and eight others are now listed on the wall. Fitzgibbon’s son was killed in action in Vietnam on September 7, 1965. This makes them one of only three father-and-son service members to die in that conflict. The others were Leo Hester Sr. and Leo Hester Jr.; and Fred and Bert Jenkins.
3. The amiable Ford is a good sport about the send-up. He and Chase will go on to become friends, and Ford will even host a special comedy symposium at his presidential library in 1986—at which Chase will appear.
4. Patti Reagan takes her mother’s maiden name while in college because her liberal political views clash with those of her father. Beginning in 1974, she has a four-year relationship with Bernie Leadon, a founding member of the Eagles. Together, they write the song “I Wish You Peace,” which appears on the Eagles’ One of These Nights album.
5. The marriage of Kristin and Rick Nelson is already strained at the time, thanks to the constant travel required by his musical career—and to his womanizing. They will reconcile and split several times before finally divorcing in 1982. Rick Nelson left his entire estate to his four children, leaving Kristin Nelson with nothing after he died in a plane crash in De Kalb, Texas, on New Year’s Eve 1985. Kristin Nelson is the older sister of television star Mark Harmon.
6. The quote comes from White House counselor to the president Robert T. Hartmann, who is best known for penning Ford’s inaugural address in 1974.
7. On that same day, November 4, 1975, Ford also appoints Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, Dick Cheney as White House chief of staff, and George H. W. Bush as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. All three men will play pivotal roles in American politics for the next thirty years.
8. Michael Lance Carvin is an admirer of convicted mass murderer Charles Manson’s acolyte, Squeaky Fromme, who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford. The pistol turns out to be a toy replica of an actual pistol. Carvin, who phoned the Denver office of the Secret Service two weeks earlier to make death threats against Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Nelson Rockefeller, is arrested and later convicted of eight felony charges on April 19, 1976. Carvin is released on bail while awaiting sentencing and promptly flees. Federal agents finally capture him in Lake City, Florida, and Carvin is sent to prison. He is released on January 4, 1982, and resumes a normal life, including getting married and landing a steady job. However, in 1998 he is accused of making death threats against controversial disc jockey Howard Stern. He is sentenced to two years in federal prison, a period reduced to seven months. His current location is unknown.
9. The enmity between Reagan and Ford only grew in the months leading up to the convention. Ford cleverly hired Stuart Spencer to run his campaign, well aware that Spencer managed both of Reagan’s gubernatorial victories in California. This insider knowledge of Reagan’s rhetoric helped Ford win the opening primary in New Hampshire by painting Reagan as keen to levy taxes. Should Ford have lost in New Hampshire, the election might have been over. Yet he continued his string of victories in Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois. Then, just as Reagan’s staffers were suggesting their candidate quit the race, Reagan won the North Carolina primary. He accused Ford of letting the United States fall behind the Soviet Union in the global arms race, which played into America’s mourning over the loss in Vietnam. Ford countered with an attack ad suggesting Ronald Reagan would be quick to start a nuclear war. Ford also sowed seeds of discontent among Reagan backers by inviting influential delegates to the White House, campaigning for delegates seeking political office, and allowing key delegates to be seen with him at important celebrations, such as the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial gala in New York.
10. Reagan is quoting Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in his final address to Congress on April 19, 1951, in which he concluded fifty-two years of military service with the same words. MacArthur also famously uttered the line “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
Chapter Twelve
1. Turnout for the Truman-Dewey race in 1948 was 51.1 percent. Carter-Ford in 1976 was 53.55 percent. The lowest turnout in modern history is 49 percent for the Clinton-Dole contest in 1996. Until 1900, voter turnout in the United States frequently exceeded 75 percent. The highest in recorded U.S. history was 81.8 percent in 1876, when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of New York lost the popular vote but won the election over Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York by one vote cast by the congressionally appointed Electoral Commission.
2. Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford were a study in contrasts, with Betty’s fun-loving persona a polar opposite to Nancy’s steely self-control. The press called their appearance at the 1976 Republican National Convention the “battle of the queens” and wrote extensively on their choices of dress and hairstyle. At one point during the convention, an ovation for Nancy Reagan was cut short when the band launched into “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” whereupon Betty Ford and singer Tony Orlando got up onstage and danced. Nancy Reagan seethed. The competition did not end at the convention, with Nancy making it a point to write critically of Betty Ford in her 1989 memoir, My Turn.
3. Reagan normally tapes just fifteen radio spots at a time. He does this with producer Harry O’Connor. Each address is three minutes long and most are written by Reagan himself.
4. Just as they did with Ford’s pratfalls, Saturday Night Live was quick to spoof Carter’s gaffe. In a skit that aired the night of October 16, 1976, Dan Aykroyd played the part of Carter in a mock interview with a female journalist, Liz Montgomery of the New York Post, played by Jane Curtin.
MONTGOMERY: Governor Carter, you have said that the Playboy interview may have been a mistake. Do you think you are being too honest with the American people, and do you still lust after women?
GOVERNOR CARTER: Well, I don’t think there’s such a thing as being too honest, uh, Ms. Montgomery, and just to prove it I’m going to answer honestly how I feel right now … I want to say that you’re a very attractive woman, and your hair looks kind of silky and kind of soft and, uh, at this moment, in my heart, I’m wearing a leather mask and breathing in your ear.
5. Carter narrowly beat Ford in the popular vote, 50 percent to 48 percent. However, he garnered 297 of the electoral votes to Ford’s 240, thus sealing his victory.
Chapter Thirteen
1. The twenty-one-year-old Bremer attacked Wallace at a campaign rally in Laurel, Maryland, firing four bullets into Wallace’s body at close range. One bullet lodged in Wallace’s spine, paralyzing him for life. Three other bullets wounded nearby police officers and campaign volunteers. Bremer was sentenced to fifty-three years in prison but was released after thirty-five. He is now a free man.
2. Foster won the role over a reported 250 other actresses, including Kim Basinger, Mariel Hemingway, Carrie Fisher, Bo Derek, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Debra Winger, and Eve Plumb, best known for playing Jan Brady on the wholesome television show The Brady Bunch. Despite the extensive casting search, Scorcese told Brandy Foster, Jodie’s mother, that he had never considered anyone else for Iris.
3. Robert De Niro reportedly stole the line from Bruce Springsteen, who said it onstage in response to fans shouting his name.
4. This condition is known as erotomania, in which an individual believes someone he or she admires is harboring the same feelings toward him/her. It is often associated with mental illness.
Chapter Fourteen
1. The shortage of American gasoline was caused by the overthrow of the shah of Iran in January 1979. The Iranian ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, cut Iran’s oil production, drastically reducing the shipment of crude-oil shipments to the United States. The soaring price of gasoline plunged the American economy into a recession and sent interest rates soaring to as much as 20 percent.
2. Operation Eagle Claw was aborted at the behest of its commanders shortly after the would-be rescuers arrived at Desert One, their preliminary staging area in the Iranian Dasht-e Kavir desert, due to mechanical problems with the mission’s helicopters. Carter approved their request. However, as the Special Forces units began pulling out of Iran, a helicopter collided with a C-130 transport. The subsequent explosion resulted in the deaths of five air crewmen aboard the C-130 and three from the RH-53D helicopter. The press was informed of the debacle at 1:00 a.m.
3. A gift from Britain’s Queen Victoria to the United States in 1880, the desk was made from timbers of the Arctic exploration vessel HMS Resolute, which was frozen in ice and later retrieved by American whaling vessels before being returned to Great Britain. It was used by Presidents Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama in the Oval Office. The first President Bush used theResolute desk for the first five months of his presidency, then had it moved into his private study.
4. Every effort was made to keep Ted Kennedy’s name out of the media regarding the accident, but shortly after noon on July 19, 1969, radio station WBZ in Boston broke the story that Kennedy was the driver. The lurid headline in the New York Daily News the next day read, “Teddy Escapes, Blonde Drowns.” The scandal was forced out of the headlines later that day, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon. However, the story was quickly revived and followed Kennedy for the rest of his life.
5. The body of Mary Jo was buried in Pennsylvania, where in December 1969 a local judge denied a request by the State of Massachusetts to exhume the body for a further inquiry into the cause of death.
6. Despite the lopsided total, Kennedy’s victories in the crucial California and New York primaries kept him in the race.
7. Though often discussed as a candidate, Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy never again sought the presidency after Carter defeated him in 1980. He went on to serve forty-seven years in the Senate, the fourth longest of any senator in U.S. history. Despite many legislative achievements, his career was tarnished by a propensity for drink and women. He divorced his wife, Joan, in 1982, and married for a second time, to Victoria Reggie, in 1992. After his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in an airplane crash in 1999, Ted Kennedy appeared to settle down, adopting the role of family patriarch. He died of brain cancer on August 25, 2009. Ted Kennedy was seventy-seven years old.
8. Reagan won the popular vote 50.8 percent to 41.0 percent, with third-party candidate Illinois senator John Anderson getting 6.0 percent. The results were even more punishing in the Electoral College, where Reagan won 489–49. Despite these lopsided numbers, Carter later blamed his loss on the participation of John Anderson in the race.
Chapter Fifteen
1. Hinckley made this comment to court psychiatrists when he went on trial for shooting the president.
2. Hinckley usually checked his luggage, knowing his guns would not be x-rayed. The practice of x-raying carry-on luggage began in 1973, in an effort to curb the extremely high rate of airline hijackings (forty in 1969 alone). At the time, most airlines were opposed to individual passenger screening, and it was not even necessary to show identification when checking in for a flight. The Air Transportation Security Act of 1974 made x-raying carry-on luggage the law. Checked luggage was not x-rayed or searched until 1988, in response to the bombing that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
3. Hinckley was charged with possession of concealed weapons. Carrying a gun without a permit was not against the law in Tennessee at the time.
Chapter Sixteen
1. At the time of its shooting by Hungarian big-game hunter Joseph Fénykövi on November 12, 1955, it was the largest-ever African elephant in recorded history. On March 6, 1959, Fénykövi donated the preserved hide of the elephant to the Smithsonian, where a team of taxidermists labored for sixteen months to prepare it for display.
2. More than sixty-eight thousand dollars in today’s money.
3. Blair House is a 120-room, 60,600-square-foot mansion across the street from the White House. Built in 1824, it was originally the home of Surgeon General of the U.S. Army Joseph Lovell. Francis Preston Blair Sr., adviser to several presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, purchased the home in 1836. The United States bought the property in 1942 to avoid having guests of the president sleep in hotels.
4. Gerald Ford once noted that Reagan’s hair was “prematurely orange.” This occasional side effect is often seen as evidence of the use of Clairol hair dye, and in 2009 a former Clairol executive stated to the New York Times that the Reagans brought their own personal hair colorist into the White House. However, it has never been confirmed.
5. Ron Reagan Jr. made these comments in an interview with New York magazine in December 1980.
6. On January 19, 1981, the Algiers Accord resulted in the freeing up of $7.9 billion in Iranian assets that had been frozen by the United States once the hostage crisis began. This paved the way for the hostages’ freedom.
7. This American tradition of welcoming home prisoners of war and soldiers was revived by the 1973 song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” by Tony Orlando and Dawn. The practice dates to the nineteenth century, when American women wore a yellow ribbon to show their faithfulness to a husband or sweetheart serving in the U.S. Cavalry.
8. This occurred at precisely 5:08 p.m. on January 20, 1981.
9. It was Richard Nixon who introduced the price controls on gasoline, in an attempt to stimulate greater domestic oil production. Carter instituted a levy known as a “windfall tax” against the oil companies during his administration, which promptly led to a decrease in domestic output. He later signed an executive order that would phase out price controls by October 1981. Reagan’s lifting of the controls before that scheduled date caused production to soar, leading to a 50 percent drop in the price of oil.
Chapter Seventeen
1. Dr. John Hopper will be sued by Hinckley’s many victims, saying that Hopper should have known he was dangerous and placed him in a hospital. The case was dismissed.
Chapter Eighteen
1. Cronkite considers Hoover’s presidency to have been “damned” by the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt to be a man of great charisma and personal strength. He considers Harry Truman one of the great presidents and was surprised by Dwight Eisenhower’s total recall about the World War II D-Day landings more than a decade later. He thought John F. Kennedy handsome and sometimes arrogant; Lyndon Johnson larger than life; Richard Nixon an oddball; Gerald Ford a nice, straightforward guy; and Jimmy Carter to have been the smartest president he ever met.
2. The Soviet Union had no nuclear warheads at the end of World War II, when Gen. George Patton urged Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson to prolong that conflict by pushing for a show of strength against the encroaching Russian influence. Patton believed the Soviet Union was just as dangerous as the Third Reich. By 1981, as Reagan takes office, the Soviets have 32,146 nuclear warheads aimed at America, and the United States has 9,000 fewer aimed at Russia.
3. Reagan made this comment from his hotel suite during the 1976 Republican National Convention. He was lamenting his loss to Ford and the missed opportunity to implement his own foreign policy. His words continued: “I wanted to become president of the United States so I could sit down with Brezhnev. And I was going to let him pick out the size of the table, and I was going to listen to him tell me, the American president, what we were going to have to give up. And I was going to listen to him for maybe twenty minutes, and then I was going to get up from my side of the table, walk around to the other side, and lean over and whisper in his ear, ‘Nyet.’ It’s been a long time since they’ve heard ‘nyet’ from an American president.”
4. KGB, for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, translates from the Russian as “Committee for State Security.”
5. Gulag is short for Glavnoe Upravelenie Lagerei, or “main camp administration.” Though often thought to have existed only above the Arctic Circle, in Siberia, they were located throughout the Soviet Union. These were prison, labor, and psychiatric camps designed to break the will of dissidents through torture, hard labor, and exposure to extreme cold. Sentences were determined in advance by Brezhnev’s hierarchy. Trials were conducted in secret, with no chance for an appeal.
6. Reagan begins keeping a journal on the very first day of his presidency. He will not miss a single entry over the course of his administration. Several days after the incident, he even took the time to write about the day he was shot.
Chapter Nineteen
1. A button featuring the image of his hero John Lennon is in his left pocket. Lennon was shot dead by an assassin just four months previously. Hinckley attended a vigil for Lennon shortly afterward. His father, Jack Hinckley, was actively involved in a Christian relief organization known as World Vision during the mid-1970s. Some believe the global missionary group was engaged in espionage on behalf of the U.S. government. The Catholic human rights group Pax Christi accused World Vision of being “a Trojan horse for U.S. foreign policy.” The fact that Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, also worked for World Vision has led some to suggest a link between the two shootings. However, a link between the two assassination attempts and World Vision has never been proven.
2. Eighteen years before, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy suffered through the same ordeal, entering a hospital emergency room to await the outcome of surgery on her husband after JFK was shot. Jackie Kennedy first handed doctors pieces of his skull she’d retrieved from the presidential limousine, then stood patiently in a corner of the trauma room as doctors tried to revive him. Her pink suit was still drenched in the blood of her husband.
3. Vice President George H. W. Bush was slated to give a speech in Austin, Texas. When news came that Reagan had been shot, he returned to Washington.
4. Haig never recovered from the public perception that he had become unglued in this time of crisis. He was fired as secretary of state fifteen months later and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988.
5. The FBI asked for the physical examination as a precautionary technicality. The exam was performed by Dr. William J. Brownlee.
6. Maureen Reagan has just announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate from California, against her father’s wishes. Several weeks before the shooting, Michael Reagan was accused by California investigators of felony stock fraud. He will be cleared of the fraud charges in November. Without her father’s backing, Maureen’s Senate bid is ill-fated, ending when she finishes fifth in a field of thirteen candidates during the primary election. The protective Nancy Reagan sees both actions as a betrayal on the part of Reagan’s children from his first marriage.
Chapter Twenty
1. Known as Dupuytren’s contracture, this disorder is found most often in older males of northern European descent, which is why it is also known as Viking disease.
2. After the shooting, it was Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) who proclaimed from the Senate floor that America was a “sick society.”
3. Columbia was launched April 12, 1981, twenty years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Designed as a reusable platform, the Space Shuttle rocketed into space and landed back on Earth with wheels down, like a traditional airplane. Its versatility allowed its crew to actually live in space. The astronauts could float free of the spacecraft to explore and to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. They could even make repairs of existing satellites. In the words of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Space Shuttle “fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe.”
4. Reagan expressed a willingness to sit down at the negotiating table with Brezhnev, as the Soviet premier had demanded. However, Reagan also made it clear that “a great deal of tension in the world today is due to Soviet actions.” He took Brezhnev to task for the Soviet nuclear and military buildup and for its ongoing attempts to use force directly and indirectly to increase its sphere of influence.
Chapter Twenty-One
1. The Argentines call the islands the Malvinas and have laid claim to them since the nineteenth century, protesting British occupation multiple times since.
2. Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts, in the eastern England town of Grantham. Her father, Alfred Roberts, served as town alderman, a lay minister, and mayor of Grantham, in addition to owning two grocery stores. He was accused on several occasions of groping, fondling, and taking other sexual liberties with his young female employees, which was one plot thread of a thinly veiled 1937 satirical novel of Grantham, Rotten Borough. Some believe these accusations were false, spread by political opponents of his daughter. Neither of Margaret Thatcher’s parents lived to see her rise to prime minister. Alfred Roberts died in 1970; Thatcher’s mother, Beatrice, died in 1960.
3. Shortly after the crisis began, Leach insisted that Thatcher back a swift counterattack. “If we do not,” Leach explained to the prime minister, “or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose words count for little.” Thatcher agreed.
4. The French-born Colbert was born Emilie Chauchoin. She is best known for her role opposite Clark Gable in the 1934 comedy, It Happened One Night, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar. A staunch conservative Republican, Colbert died at Bellerive on Barbados on July 30, 1996. She had lived there alone ever since her husband of thirty-two years, a California surgeon named Joel Pressman, passed away in 1968 at the age of sixty-seven.
5. First explored in 1775 by British sea captain James Cook, South Georgia was named for King George III and has been a British protectorate ever since. The remote island earned lasting fame in 1916, when Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was crushed by ice and he saved the lives of his crew by piloting a small boat across the Southern Ocean to the safety of a South Georgia Island whaling port. After his death in 1922, Shackleton was buried on South Georgia Island. Somewhat poignantly, one of the British vessels involved in retaking the island in 1982 is a modern vessel also christened Endurance.
6. Great Britain’s version of the White House, 10 Downing Street is the official residence and workplace of the prime minister. While appearing relatively modest from the outside, it contains more than one hundred rooms and offices, along with the third-floor living quarters. Originally a collection of three houses built by Sir George Downing in 1682, it was first used for official state business in 1732 by Sir Robert Walpole and is within walking distance of the Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square.
7. Among the few countries that backed Great Britain were Ireland, New Zealand, and Argentina’s antagonist neighbor, Chile.
8. “They disagreed over the Falklands, but that didn’t hurt their friendship at all,” Nancy Reagan will later comment.
Chapter Twenty-Three
1. Reagan began using a hearing aid in his right ear in September 1983. He began wearing one in his left ear in 1985.
2. There is evidence that the invasion was planned long in advance of the coup. The overthrown regime was also pro-Cuban. Since 1979 the United States had sought to destabilize Grenada by discouraging U.S. tourism and offering little economic assistance. The Reagan administration escalated tensions by urging the World Bank to block funding to Grenada’s government. In August 1981, U.S. troops rehearsed a mock invasion of Grenada on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
3. Reagan is alluding to an old Irish custom of tossing a cap through a doorway before entering, to see if the visitor is welcome. It was later adapted in the American West as the habit of throwing a hat through a doorway to see if it would draw gunfire.
4. A second suicide bomber strikes the nearby French military compound, killing fifty-eight French paratroopers and six civilians.
5. Buckley was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, Section 59, Lot 346.
6. The United States captured Grenada at a cost of 19 American killed and 116 wounded in the seven-week war. Its primary opposition on the island came from a joint Grenadian and Cuban force, which suffered casualties of 70 dead and 417 wounded. They were aided by an additional contingent of Soviet, East German, Bulgarian, North Korean, and Libyan troops, which suffered no casualties.
7. The scandal became known as Iran-Contra. The administration’s actions were illegal for three reasons: the Boland Amendment of 1982 prohibited funding of the Contras beyond congressionally approved limits; the sale of arms to Iran was prohibited; and it is against U.S. national policy to pay ransom for hostages. Some thirty million dollars were transferred from Iran to the Contras. Eleven administration officials were ultimately indicted for their role in selling arms to Iran and funneling the money to the Contras, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and CIA chief William Casey. Nobody went to prison, and George H. W. Bush pardoned many of the perpetrators in the final days of his presidency. Although two key members of the conspiracy, U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, made it clear that Reagan knew what was happening, no charges were ever filed against the president. During the 1985–1987 investigations, Reagan’s personal approval rating dropped from 67 to 46 percent but later rebounded.
Chapter Twenty-Four
1. Rancho del Cielo (“Ranch in the Sky”) was originally developed in 1841 by Mexican landowner José Jésus Pico. He built the house in 1871. It remained in his family until 1941. Ronald Reagan bought the 688-acre ranch in 1974 for $527,000 from the family of Roy and Rosalie Cornelius. Their daughter, Glenda, had been Patti Reagan’s roommate at boarding school. Glenda Cornelius was an accomplished rodeo rider, and her parents had intended for the home to be her inheritance. However, they sold the land after she was killed in a New Year’s Eve head-on automobile collision.
2. Nancy’s words are picked up by microphones from the various network television cameras. Ten days later, while still at the ranch, Reagan himself will mistakenly speak into a live microphone, joking that he has outlawed Russia and that “we begin bombing in five minutes.” As a result, Soviet military forces will go on war alert in preparation for an attack.
3. Springsteen had been politically ambivalent until this incident, aligning himself with veterans’ groups and local food banks but refusing to back political candidates from either party. However, as a result of the “Born in the U.S.A.” incident, he will make it a point to openly endorse liberal causes. In 2004 he will endorse Sen. John Kerry for president, and in 2008 and 2012 Springsteen will make campaign appearances on behalf of Barack Obama. However, the misunderstood legacy of “Born in the U.S.A.” lives on. Attendees at the 2014 Connecticut Republican Convention were asked to name their favorite Springsteen song. “Born in the U.S.A.” was the clear favorite. One delegate even compared it patriotically to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
4. Geraldine Ferraro is Walter Mondale’s running mate. The forty-nine-year-old congresswoman from Queens, New York, is the first female vice presidential candidate from a major party.
5. A 2001 Duke University medical study showed that 50 percent of individuals who underwent open heart surgery suffered immediate memory problems that were often still evident five years later.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1. Reagan wins forty-nine states. Mondale captures just his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. The final Electoral College tally is 525 to 13.
Chapter Twenty-Six
1. Fromme was a member of the Manson Family, members of which brutally murdered seven people on a two-day killing spree in 1969. On the second night, pregnant actress Sharon Tate was stabbed sixteen times, even as she pleaded to live long enough to give birth. Tate was married to director Roman Polanski, who was not present when the hideous crime took place.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
1. Regan was secretary of the treasury during Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. In an unusual move, he and James Baker switched jobs in early 1985 because Baker was exhausted from trying to keep the White House running independently of Nancy. The switch was orchestrated almost completely without the president’s knowledge. He merely gave final approval to the plan when it was presented to him. The president did not seem to think it a big deal.
2. Hall was later given immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony against Oliver North.
3. Known as the Tower Commission, it was named after its chairman, former Republican senator John Tower of Texas. The commission completed its three-month investigation in late February 1987. Its three-hundred-page report laid the blame for Iran-Contra on Ronald Reagan, demanding that he “take responsibility” for the illegality. The report also blamed his staff for shielding him from a number of key issues involving the sale of arms to Iran. “Yes, the president made mistakes,” Tower told the press. “I think that’s very plain English.”
4. Heckler’s very public divorce was played out in the Washington newspapers. That drama, combined with what some considered her ineffective management skills, were factors in her ouster.
5. Reagan loyalists insist that Reagan was firmly in control of the executive branch at all times. They reject any reportage to the contrary. It should be noted that Ronald Reagan retained his acting skills and rarely showed physical or mental distress to anyone but Nancy, whom he trusted implicitly.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
1. The memo concerned efforts to coach Reagan through the Iran-Contra affair.
2. Ronald Reagan was never held accountable for Iran-Contra. In 1990 he testified behind closed doors to Iran-Contra prosecutor Dan Webb, in the federal trial of former national security adviser John Poindexter. Reagan’s defense was that he could not remember any details of illegalities. Poindexter and Oliver North were among the thirteen members of the Reagan administration indicted for Iran-Contra. Both men were found guilty of several felony charges, but their convictions were overturned. Not a single person went to jail for the Iran-Contra conspiracy.
3. The wall was actually two walls, separated by 160 meters of open ground. This space was mined, contained trip-wired machine guns, and was patrolled by guard dogs. Watch towers overlooked this no-man’s-land, and East German soldiers shot on sight all who tried to escape into West Berlin.
4. John F. Kennedy spoke to the people of West Berlin on June 26, 1963. He expressed solidarity for their freedoms and disgust about the newly built Berlin Wall, telling the crowd, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”).
5. Reagan noted in May 1975 that “Communism is neither an economic or a political system—it is a form of insanity—a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears.” By the time Reagan entered office it was clear that the Soviet Union was struggling economically and that its people were becoming unhappy with the ever-increasing hardships. Reagan’s presidential foreign policy of “peace through strength” was a master plan to bankrupt the Soviet economy by building up America’s military, forcing the Russians to keep pace—knowing all the while that they could not.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
1. As an orator, Reagan is managed by the Washington Speakers Bureau and earns fifty thousand dollars per speech, minus a 20 percent agent commission. In addition to speaking with corporate groups in America, Reagan made $2 million on a ten-day speaking tour of Japan shortly after leaving office.
Chapter Thirty
1. Thatcher’s popularity was in such decline by the late 1980s that her reelection appeared all but impossible. A poll tax she advocated led to widespread rioting, and she was deeply mistrustful of Britain’s participation in the European Union, thinking it eroded its power. Opinion polls showed her approval ratings to be below 40 percent at the time her party pushed her aside. Voters said that she had grown out of touch with the people.
Chapter Thirty-One
1. Nixon’s last residence was not in California, but in Park Ridge, New Jersey. His stroke occurred as he was sitting down to dinner on April 18. After his death four days later, his body was flown to California aboard the same Boeing VC-137C that transported the casket of John F. Kennedy back to Washington, DC, after his assassination in 1963. As with his departure from the nation’s capital following his resignation in 1974, Nixon’s plane landed at El Toro Marine Corps Base. Nixon’s body was then transported by motorcade to his final resting place twenty miles north.
Chapter Thirty-Two
1. Ronald Reagan’s home is watched over by a Secret Service detail. There is also a day nurse and night nurse, along with a full cooking and housekeeping staff. There are bedrooms for two servants, a wine cellar, an exercise room, and a hothouse for growing flowers outside near the pool.